Not only that but it is considered a war crime to torture from my understanding. So how can we look at Russia and say they are committing war crimes if the US blatantly does things like this. We need to lead on a moral high ground.
EDIT: On the subject of dictatorships and the UN, there's a brief but insightful essay I recently came across recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30687498
> So many member states are themselves dictatorships that engage in horrible human rights violations—and they stick together. The latter point is key: the worst countries are far more united in protecting human rights abuses than the democracies are in protecting human rights.
Why so? Perhaps for Iraq you've forgot about the fact that VP Cheney's former company made significant gains from that lie?
The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue.
Either we - the ones being served cake - call all BS or we don't. But ongoing mediocre excuses for mediocrity aren't working.
/rant
First of all, I'm advocating for American behavior to remain beyond reproach and I favor prosecuting the American officials who misled the American public in the case of the Iraq war.
That said, I heartily reject the binary categorization between unblemished and blemished countries because all countries fall into the latter group. Of course there are differences in the quantity and degree of lying and unjustified violence that your scheme glosses over--the idea that no country is better than say, Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or Maoist China serves only gives rhetorical cover to the worst offenders/offenses: "who is Canada to criticize Nazi Germany considering its track record of unjustified violence against its own native population?". This is the worst kind of race-to-the bottom rhetoric.
"Oh. Our lies and murders aren't as bad as {insert culture panic button here}" continue to work well for the elites, not so much so for the rest of us.
How about we put a cultural / sociopolitical price on say the USA's three-quarters of a trillion DoD budget? Certainly there's plenty of injustice that could be addressed with that type of $. But instead we buy into the status quo narrative?
That's not working. The point is, let's get our own house in order, instead of manufacturing a narrative that is bold-faced, shameless, hyprocricy.
I don't understand what you are saying here. More than one group can commit war crimes.
So it is not true that it undermines “our” moral posture. That is just rethorical gymnastic.
I think the US militaries have insufficient controls to uncover and punish war crimes, and the “American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002” is particularly disgracefull. I believe the US should do better.
That being said when Russian troops intentionally shell civilians that is a war crime.
This case of excusing Russia's invasion of Ukraine because the US commits war crimes is gold medal mental gymnastics and really only makes sense in the context of the history of Russian propaganda.
I double-checked the parent comments and not a single person did that.
One can be a hypocrite and also be correct. Either a nation is committing war crimes, or they aren't. Either it's morally justified to oppose war crimes, or it isn't. You can't argue that the US should be punished for war crimes without also arguing that the US and NATO are correct to oppose Russian war crimes.
Otherwise, the argument is that Russia should be allowed to commit war crimes because the US gets to, which is at best an extremely childish way of viewing the world, wholly separated from morality.
I mean the poster at the top of this thread immediately tries to make some justification…
> This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization.
No! It’s just wrong! We should never do this to other human beings. Period. But you want a GOOD reason why not ?
Because the people you trained to torture abroad one day return home and get jobs like security outside the nightclub your teenage kids are going to. You’re literally training psychopaths which later get unleashed on the public at home.
Also we know torture doesn’t work for information gathering. It’s only useful as a tool of oppression. Which is why we’re actually using it.
But seriously. I can’t believe I need to make the case against torture. It’s just wrong.
Ultimately they created a show that fed into the publics desire for revenge, post 9/11, and made a big success out of it.
What it leads to is the point I already made - the goal torture is oppression; to create fear and thereby obedience, not gathering information.
"The new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in The Hague. This provision, dubbed the "Hague invasion clause," has caused a strong reaction from U.S. allies around the world, particularly in the Netherlands. "
"U.S.: 'Hague Invasion Act' Becomes Law"
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...